etoy

MISSION ETERNITY explores the fundamental questions of digital technology and media, investigating both closely related subjects, such as the online storage and conservation of digital data, and existential themes like the sense of time, the safeguard and loss of memories, identity in virtual contexts and the possibility of communication with future civilizations

etoy.CORPORATION, network creator and driving force behind MISSION ETERNITY, has always focused its attention on the redefinition of art history and the expansion of reality, through operations based on the sharing and distribution of authorship, risk, resources and ownership in intangible assets and cultural values, and through controversial actions
aimed at producing and preserving art in the forms of widely participated processes

In Pollinaria, etoy introduces a new figure in the framework of MISSION ETERNITY - the PASSENGER - and with the ENCAPSULATION procedure invites candidates to take part in an eternal journey. Each participant is assisted by etoy agents in the design and construction of a MINI ARCANUM CAPSULE, a data package of 32MB destined for MISSION ETERNITY STOWAWAY STORAGE. This system attempts to preserve the gathered data forever, through infinite
processes of copying performed within the social network of the MISSION ETERNITY ANGELS, an ever growing
number of people who donate part of their free hard disk space to the mission. Each ARCANUM CAPSULE
contains digital traces of an individual: voice samples, drawings, ASCII notes, photos, official documents
and any other data that can be stored in open formats. This special type of self-portrait is an artistic
method exploring the culture of electronic memory, through collection, selection, storage, transmission
or loss of information. At the same time it is a tool to investigate afterlife, the most virtual of all worlds.
The PASSENGER ENCAPSULATION at Pollinaria involves the recording of a fundamental set of
live/life data, indicative of the participants’ deepest manifestation of existence: the heart's electrical
activity collected and recorded by means of electrocardiograms carried out by etoy agents.
These will constitute a further resource for the MINI ARCANUM CAPSULES,
in their eternal voyage through time and space